Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I don't know if people would be interested in something like this, but I think it could increase the value of skilled industrialists and possibly drive some more content in the game.

Basically I'm suggesting a building mini-game that affects the final stats on a ship. Be it max hp, speed, fitting, etc, something to make it better than a regular version. The variability would be small 0.5%-1.5% increase, depending on success level of building. The worst outcome would be a ship with base stats. I haven't really thought about what the minigame would look like, but maybe something that pits precision component placement against a timer, with higher tier ships being more difficult to succeed at. This would be optional, and could be bypassed for people who really just need to build 200 rifters and get it over with.

Essentially I would like to create a role for people who like to build things well, and for them to be able to make a ship that can give their buyers a bit of an edge. Obviously these ships would be then more desirable (expensive) than base models, which I think could be an interesting market driver. It would give industrialists something more to do other than simply selecting the number of runs and where to build. I feel like it would really give industrialists more value within alliances as well. Exceptional builders would be sought after and could be an indirect conflict driver.

Just some whimsical musings really. I don't know how hard something like this would be to implement. Can't be any worse than trying to fix how poses work, eh?

I shall try to address each of your points.

1. Having detractors does not invalidate an idea, nor indicate its merit.

2. I would actually propose that these ships be handled in a similar way to blueprints. There would be few stats that are actually affected, but they would be variable on each ship. The stats would have tiers, similar to ME or PE on a blueprint, giving a set bonus per tier. The difficulty of the minigame would be set sufficiently high enough one would need to be at least one std deviation above the average skill of eve players to even be able to attempt to create a ship in this manner, and that of those attempts, only a few would be successful. I'm talking old-school level 90 tetris hard here.

That these ships would not be able to be sold on regular market is not actually something I would have a problem with. BPOs and BPCs get traded all the time with varying meta values. I think that this would actually add to the feel that this was a custom built hull worth some serious extra iskies.

3. Every percentage mattering would actually increase the value of this ability. Sure, if you fail, the ship ends up being a regular version, but that is hardly sup-optimal. If you want to waste the minerals trashing it and re-trying, then that would be a cost associated with attempting this.

4. I think this will always be an issue in eve. The best thing that can be done is to have the stats be balanced (as much as possible) and make the mini-game indiscriminatory as to which result was achieved. This is similar to the module tiericide issue that ccp is dealing with. I'm not talking about just making the new meta-4 version of everything.

Yes, it is. If you don't have the most optimal version of the ship for what you're doing, you're going to die to the people who DO have said version. Don't forget, we pay billions and train for months for 2% bonuses. Every edge you can get counts.

Think of the old style meta levels. When does anyone actually use anything below meta 4, barring some INCREDIBLY niche cases where only a meta 3 will fit? Your proposal would see a standard rifter used about as often as a meta 0 autocannon.

Remember when CCP thought that the price was going to be the limiting factor on the proliferation of supercapitals.....
Yeah, we all know how that turned out. Simply put, no. Aside from the balancing nightmare it would be (even small percentages can make a HUGE difference), the technical issues it would cause would be staggering (and no, the solution isn't as easy as you think, just look at the ship skin system for an example)

no, again a database nightmare as every ship with a different stat would be a new item. unless repackaging destroys the stat you wouldn't be able to but a market or a program code for a ship to have every possible tweak stat.

you would have a ship/line of code for every stat you could change multiplied the amount of percent you could get.
IE say you can change 6 stats up to a total of 5%, that's 5 ships for every stat being 30 ships of 1 type






Also no it would be with the crowd that has maxed everything I see 1 month olds get vindi's with faction gear in order to make up for their skills

what you are describing is a pretty inefficient way to code items into a database. And it would actually require 7,776 items to do what you are describing.

Either way, it is a completely pointless argument unless CCP confirms that this is how they have coded their database. I suspect it is not. Or else we would would need one new item for every ship that had a different fitting. And if that was the case, then my idea would a tiny drop in the bucket of their already massive database of individual ship information, considering the spectrum of combinations that are possible with any fit.



These are outliers and I don't consider them reliable statistics to support any sort of rational argument.



This was in part what got me thinking about how to drive more of the industry within nullsec, instead of industry guys just sending most of their stuff to Jita. Granted, this doesn't do anything at all to adress the issues facing nullsec industry at the moment, but I thought it could add interesting and valuable complexity to Eve.

*shrug* As long as there are balanced trade-offs I don't see any problem with it. But allowing ships with superior stats across the board doesn't pass game-balance muster. Making a ship 1% better in one way should make it 0.5% worse in some other way. And of course, as others have pointed out, each ship created this way would be unique and couldn't be traded in the market. You'd have to use contracts.

I don't agree with ShahFluffers's points #3 and #4. He basically made a case against rigs, tiered modules, modules in general, faction items, and having a selection of various ships to choose from.

Actually... that is EXACTLY how the database is coded. Read up on CCP's ongoing work (in the DEV blogs) regarding ship skins and painting in general. There is a reason they are having problems implementing such a seemingly "simple" system.

The gist of it is this; each time you alter a packaged ship in any way (even for a simple paintjob), a new database entry specific to that particular ship variant has to be created.

For assembled ships... they are all pulling from the same base entry in the database and applying player skills and mod effects to it. The ship IS unique in a way (which is why assembled ships cannot be sold on the market)... but once it is packaged again is ceases to be unique. It is simply a stackable "number" in the database.
A good way to test this (sorta) is by jumping out of your ship while it is in space. The ship will literally revert back to its base stats + the base stats that the modules provide (with none of your skills factored in).


BPOs and BPCs operate under a similar principle... but due to the VASTLY lower volume they are traded at (on Contracts) it isn't as much of a problem.




Anything that gives a tangible enough of a reward ceases to be "optional"... especially for those willing to pay.

This is not something to be taken lightly as it does upset balance in the grand scheme of things.

I think you missed the point of this. Shah is not referring to this being optional for the consumer, hes talking about the producer. If ships are able to be produced with strictly better than normal stats for the same inputs, producers will be forced to compete. Besides, isn't the point of mass production being able to produce the same item for minimal cost on a large scale with minimal variance in quality? This isn't industry, this is crafting. Leave it out of eve please.

This is a valid argument given that the resources for developing EVE are limited. If this requires a lot of time to implement, other things will get delayed quite a bit. Depending on ones personal views, this can be quite a downside.



I think you should differentiate between the balancing of 4 new T3 Destroyers and "almost every ship in eve". Changing a lot of things at once is never a good idea when it comes to balancing. For this to work, it would have to be done over time in a lot of small iterations. So again, this is a rather "big thing" and would require a lot of DEV time. I don't think it's impossible or so... just very time consuming to implement.



I see another problem with this idea. In solo or verySmallScale-pvp it's of utmost importance that you can estimate the strengths and weaknesses of your opponent(s).
If I engage a Dramiel in a Kestrel... well, i know what I'll get myself into. But if i engage a Rifter that can have substantial boni which i cant detect in any way, it's a different story.
Now either you make the boni not really that good, so this does not become a problem (i'm not sure though if you'll get a much higher price for the Rifter in this case), or it will indeed make a noticeable difference, but then it adds a lot of uncertainty to the estimate of your opponents abilities.

There already are such elements in the game, you can never be certain of a ships fit, but you can (in most cases) make a good guess with knowledge and experience.
This change would add another "random" element to the fight which has nothing to do with player abilities. I don't think we should add more of them.

Imho competitive PVP-Games should have as little random elements as possible and focus on player skill.